Electronic Privacy Communications Act Needs an Update

Electronic Privacy Communications Act Needs an Update

When it comes to access to electronic records for criminal cases, the rules of the road were set down in 1986 with the passage of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). When that law was passed, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Hanni Fakhoury, people typically downloaded all of their email to their personal computers and then deleted them from the server or let the online service automatically delete their mail from the server.